Heart Like Mine A Novel - By Amy Hatvany Page 0,15

the right kind of person. Victor’s own father had left him with his mother when Victor was only five years old; Kelli knew that having a family, being a good father, was the most important thing to him. He would be the father he’d never had. She’d been convinced he would never leave her. But she was naïve to have thought that creating a new life would erase the sins from her past. She was stupid to believe she could outrun the pain.

She wondered what it was Victor wanted to talk with her about today and if he would be distracted by the purple smudges beneath her eyes. The pills she took to sleep worked only sporadically—she found herself needing to take more and more. They hadn’t worked at all last night. She’d paced the house like a wildcat, mewling silently as she ruminated on the gaping holes in her life. Mostly, the empty place where a happy marriage should have been. The place where Victor used to stand.

A sharp rap on her window yanked her out of her thoughts and sent her pulse racing. She whipped her head around and saw Spencer, Victor’s best friend and head chef, standing next to the car with a gentle smile on his face. She grabbed her purse and opened the car door to greet him.

“Sorry,” he said. “Didn’t mean to scare you. Just wanted to say hello. It’s been a while.” He placed a beefy hand on her back and gave it an awkward pat. Kelli found it sad how friends seemed to get divvied up after a divorce, like a couple’s book or CD collection. When they were married, she and Victor weren’t terribly social—he was always too busy working for them to spend much time with other couples—but when they separated, she realized just how many of her personal connections were through his restaurant. She had Diane, who’d befriended her after Ava was born, and a few acquaintances at her own job, but it was Victor who kept custody of everyone else, including Spencer.

“That’s okay,” she said. “Great to see you.”

“You too.” He paused. “You look beautiful, as usual.”

“Thanks,” she said automatically, though then she pressed her lips together and gave her head a quick shake. She knew he was being kind. She knew she’d lost too much weight to look healthy. Her hair was thinning and even though she was only thirty-three, new lines seemed to carve themselves into her face every day. Diane joked that this was the precise reason she refused to lose the extra twenty pounds she carried. “A little fat plumps out the skin,” she said. “Ben and Jerry’s instead of Botox.”

Kelli glanced at the back entrance of the Loft, then smiled at Spencer. “Can I follow you in, or should I use the front door?”

“Follow me,” he said, and they entered the restaurant together. As they walked down the narrow hallway that led into the kitchen, Kelli inhaled the rich aroma of sautéed onions and simmering broth. Victor had taught her to identify the subtle scents in a dish, the underlying earthy breath of mushrooms, the bright tang of citrus. He’d taught her that the ramen noodles she’d always thought were pretty good for pasta were actually just fried and dehydrated dough. He’d taught her the difference between searing a steak and scorching it; he’d shown her the proper method to dress a salad. She remembered the hours they spent in the kitchen before Ava was born, Victor showing her how to bake melt-in-your-mouth biscuits or concoct an aromatic stew. The first time she made a meatloaf for him and misread half a teaspoon of salt as half a cup, he’d eaten an entire piece anyway, washing each bite down with a huge swallow of water, just to keep her from crying.

“Victor’s out front,” Spencer said as they walked past the two eight-burner stoves. “I’ll go grab him.”

“It hasn’t been that long,” Kelli said as brightly as she could manage. “I remember the way.” She smiled and patted Spencer on his thick forearm. Almost eight years ago, right before Max was born, she’d helped Victor design the restaurant’s layout. She picked out the silverware and wineglasses, the thick, cream-hued tablecloths to set off the black linen napkins. She felt a pang in her stomach—she wasn’t sure if it was hunger or regret—then pushed through the double doors that led to the dining room.

It was quarter to three, smack-dab between the lunch and dinner hours,